Day 14 – Skydrive and tablets, your link to cloud storage for multiple devices
A Windows 8 Tablet for Teaching and Learning - Day 14Tuesday, December 18, 2012
I have been a user of Skydrive since its inception. When you sign up for a Microsoft account you now get 7GB of free Skydrive storage.
What is Skydrive? It is simply a storage place in the cloud that you can access anywhere there is an Internet connection. Long before Google Drive and iCloud there was Skydrive. In the past year or so, Microsoft has been improving Skydrive services and Skydrive now does many things beyond simply storing your documents in the cloud. You can now sync files from your PC or Tablet, share files with others, and use Microsoft Web Apps to access your documents even if you do not have the Office 2010 Suite installed on your computer/tablet.
One of the reasons we need solutions like Skydrive is that it is getting more and more common for individuals to have more than one device. Tablets are what some call companion devices in that they are an add-on and are not currently full-fledged replacements for laptops or desktop PCs. Because tablets are an “and” device you need to worry about how to access content from multiple devices.
It is now not uncommon for a professional to have a mobile phone, tablet, laptop, and/or desktop PC. Accessing and sharing content from device to device can be challenging and sometimes frustrating. Keeping track of different versions of the same file can be a royal pain. Microsoft Skydrive was designed to solve some of the problems of living in a multi-device world.
If you are a teacher or student you have no doubt ran into a situation where you have needed to access a file you left at school. You could have left your laptop at school or left that USB drive you use to store files you take back and forth.
Skydrive allows me to save a document that I am working on from my PC at the office to my Skydrive account that I can later access from my tablet. Since I have installed the full version of Microsoft Office on the Samsung Ativ Smart PC 500T Tablet I have complete and full access to my Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files on my tablet, just like my desktop PC. Once finished editing on the tablet I save the document back to Skydrive then I can access it from my office PC when I get back to my desk. If I get a call when I am away from the office and I do not have my tablet with me I can access the documents from my Windows 8 Phone. Since I have my Skydrive account accessible from my PC, tablet, and phone I have unprecedented flexibility in accessing my work files. I have grown to love this digital nomad lifestyle and my productivity has increased as a result of having access to my content anywhere and anytime.
One note of caution, do not store sensitive or confidential information on Skydrive. Be sure to follow your organizations policies on using Internet services.
Since this tablet has a dual personality there are actually two different ways to utilize Skydrive. Each way has its own strengths. I will begin with the easiest way to access Skydrive files. If I want fast and easy access to my files on my tablet there is a Skydrive app on the Windows 8 Start screen that I can use. Since I am using my Microsoft account to login to my tablet all of my Skydrive files are accessible to me from the Windows 8 Skydrive app. The benefit to this is that I have access to 7GB of files in the cloud and they are not stored on my device. This is particularly helpful for my mobile phone as it has limited storage. It is fantastic being able to access my pictures and other files from my Skydrive account from my phone, tablet, or PC. If 7GB of storage is not enough you can purchase additional storage at reasonable costs.
The Skydrive Windows 8 app is very simple. When I open the Skydrive app I see all of my files and folders that are stored “in the cloud”. If I want to open a word document that I stored on Skydrive I simple double-tap the filename and it opens in Word (remember I installed the full Office 2010 Suite on my tablet). If I did not have Word installed it would have opened up the Word Web App and I could do some basic editing but edits would be limited. Once I edit the file I opened in Word I tap on Save and the document is saved back to the cloud. No more keeping track of filenames. When I get back to my PC I open up Skydrive and select the file to open it and continue editing where I left off.
To use the Skydrive app you need to have robust network connection as you are accessing and saving files over the network. If there is a problem with the network you will not be able to access files from Skydrive since it is a cloud service. Opening large files will take some time depending upon network speeds.
That is all I want to say today about Skydrive. The Skydrive app is very simple to use and essentially can be treated like a network share drive as long as you have a strong Internet connection. But, in my world, sometimes a strong Internet connection is an oxymoron. If you have a slow Internet connection then accessing cloud storage might be frustrating, especially if you are accessing large files. Tomorrow I will talk more about some workarounds I have found when using Skydrive from this tablet that gives you offline access to your files. More tomorrow….
Keep on Learning,
Dr. Grissom
Tom Grissom, Ph.D.
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